10 – Aftermath by Asprin, Robert

It was too late. Illyra Saw slaves’ faces, one clearly, the rest wrapped in fog, and heard-as was the way with her gift-Jimny speak out his own name. She separated herself from the Seeing and sought words to blunt the despair her answer must contain.

“Another card,” she heard herself whisper. “Seek beneath the Whirl- wind.”

The suvesh, the ordinary non-S’danzo folk of the world, might not know any of the Seeing rituals but they knew the way things were sup- posed to go after they’d put their coin in a seeress’s palm-and any deviation was certain to mean bad news. Illyra’s visitor was sobbing openly as she reached for the first pile.

Two-not one-cards slipped free: the light-and-dark tunnel of the Three of Flames and the dark-faced portrait of the Lord of the Earth. Illyra absorbed them both and grew no wiser.

“He’s been taken onto a boat,” she said slowly, gathering the now lifeless chips of vellum into a single stack. “His leaving was not of his choosing,” she continued, putting a high gloss over his enslavement be- fore adding, without much conviction, “nor will he choose the time or manner of his return.” Illyra could not bring herself to say that the best Jimny would likely get out of his future was a grave under the soil rather than the waves.

“Is there no hope? There must be something I can do. Something, anything. Which temple should I go to? Which gods should I pray to?”

Illyra shook her head, then spoke as a woman rather than a seeress. “There is always hope-but hope doesn’t come from a handful of S’danzo cards.”